Kate Woodside is the Program Coordinator at the Health Outreach Promotion & Education (HOPE) department of Rutgers Student Health at Rutgers-New Brunswick. She manages, promotes, and instructs the Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) program which trains faculty, staff, and students how to respond to someone having a mental health or substance abuse challenge or emergency. In 2022 she helped launch HOPE’s Wellness Coaching program and trains students to become wellness coaches to their peers. Before joining HOPE in 2020, she worked in the Rutgers School of Engineering, in the Department of Material Sciences on marketing initiatives and, later, grant administration.
Before arriving at Rutgers in 2016, Kate held different professional positions in for-profit organizations, in non-profit organizations, as well as in the Department of Defense.
On the for-profit side, Kate taught English abroad, worked in sales and operations for an international educational travel company, and worked in marketing at a toy retailer. Soon after she moved overseas to Italy & Germany as a military spouse. In Germany she worked for a US Army Aviation unit managing personal pre-deployment preparations for service members & their family. Then, during the unit’s wartime deployment, she handled regular and crisis communications between the unit & the family members. On the non-profit side, she has held many leadership board positions at local non-profit organizations. Across this diversity of experiences, she has jumped (or has been thrown) into unknown environments, and in doing so has honed her ability to work with and unite various stakeholders and colleagues across vastly different units and functions, to adapt to change, and to respond creatively to adversity and opportunities.
Kate is a passionate believer in the power of cross-cultural education and experiences. Since a transformative trip to Italy in High School, she has sought out opportunities to live and work in different countries to expand her world view. To date she has lived and worked on four continents and has studied five languages.
Kate earned her bachelor’s degree from Boston College in English Literature and her Master’s of Business Administration from University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
When she isn’t working, Kate enjoys wandering grocery store aisles, cooking, gardening, skiing, and surfing when the conditions are just right. She stays busy chasing deer out of her garden and raising two teen boys.